amazement.

The tramp nodded sullenly, feeling at his throat. "Yep, dead," he said
hoarsely. "Me an' him war bummin' a freight out o' St. Louie, an' he
slipped. I know he war killed 'cause I saw 'em pick him up; six cars
went over him an' they kept me in hock fer two months."

Dick sat down on the curbing and buried his face in his hands.
"Dead--Dead"--he softly repeated to himself. "Dad is dead--killed by
the cars in St. Louis.--Dead--Dead--"

Then all the past life came back to him with a rush: the cabin home
across the river from the distillery; the still-house itself, with the
rough men who gathered there; the neighboring shanties with their
sickly, sad-faced women, and dirty, quarreling children; the store and
blacksmith shop at the crossroads in the pinery seven miles away. He
saw the river flowing sluggishly at times between banks of drooping
willows and tall marsh grass, as though smitten with the fatal spirit
of the place, then breaking into hurried movement over pebbly shoals
as though trying to escape to some healthier climate; the hill where
stood the old pine tree; the cave beneath the great rock by the spring;
and the persimmon grove in the bottoms. Then once more he suffered
with his mother, from his drunken father's rage and every detail of
that awful night in the brush, with the long days and nights of sickness
that followed before her death, came back so vividly that he wept again
with his face in his hands as he had cried by the rude bedside in the
cabin sixteen years ago. Then came the years when he had wandered from
his early home and had learned to know life in the great cities. What
a life he had found it. He shuddered as it all came back to him now.
The many times when inspired by the memory of his mother, he had tried